earthfamilyalpha

With the advent of advanced global communication, new forms of social contract can be created which transcend the geographic state. These new cybercoops or cyberstates will bring humankind to higher levels of cooperation and understanding.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Peak a Boo

World oil production may have peaked-executiveReutersThu Oct 26, 2006By Scott Malone

BOSTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - World production of crude oil may have already peaked, setting the stage for declining output that could lag demand, a top advocate of the "peak oil" theory said on Thursday. (watch)

Matthew Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Co. International, a Houston-based investment banking firm specializing in the energy sector, said U.S. government data showed that the world oil supply has declined through the first half of this year.

Energy Information Administration data showed world supply of crude oil has declined to 83.98 million barrels per day in the second quarter after hitting 84.35 million bpd in the fourth quarter of 2005.

"If you basically have another six to ten months of that decline lasting, then I think for certain we would look back and say, 'Guess what? We actually reached a sustainable peak in crude oil production in December 2005,'" Simmons said at a meeting of the United States of the the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas."

For what it is worth, my date is 2009 depending on whether or not a serious downtick is brought on by the declining housing market. Whether it simply needs to cool, or it is a giant balloon that is about to go pooohheee, the next few quarters will tell.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Whose Death Squads?

"I’m going to Baghdad next month," he said,sunlight glinting across high dollar sun glasses.

"The writing on the coin says God is Mercifuland Compassionate," Jay told him.

"Why are you going to Baghdad?" I asked.

"I’m a security guard, just got back froma year in Beijing.

"That was a better assignment," I said, makinga note to find out what Blackwater is doingin China.

"This one pays more," he said and walked away.

"He's not going to come home," Jaysaid just as I was thinking it.

We're probably wrong.

Blackwater has only lost 25 men,several famously mangled on a Fallujah bridge,since the US invaded Iraq. They train securityforces, for one thing, and are properlyequipped. Unlike Blackwater Guardsenlisted men and women do not earna base pay of $600 dollars a day.

I've been wondering who could possibly benefitfrom scores of dead bodies, bound with Iraqi policehand cuffs, heads bored through power drills,battered by torture, that turn upevery morning in Baghdad — some reportssay it's a pay for kill scenario.

The thing is —Sunni and Shi'a intermarry everywhere in Iraq.It's a non-sectarian society so if there's a civilwar someone went to a great deal of troubleto create it.

Better to locate oil fields.

Why did the United States build permanent military outpostslike Camp Balad, swimming pools, private air strips,suburban neighborhoods, I-max theaters, body buildingtemples designed by Arnold Schwarzenegger —instead of Iraqi schools, hospitals, water treatment plants,roads, neighborhood grocery stores, government service agencies?

Why hire Halliburton for billions and notIraqi citizens to rebuild their own country?

Who benefits from jobless societies?

Who benefits from civil chaos?To whose advantage is it when people livein bombed out homes, are afraid to step outside,and government is completely undermined?

Who will resist the multinational oil dealsjust now being finalized, if the Iraqi governmentis completely dysfunctional?

This tall, handsome young man who, briefly,examined an Afghan coin yesterdaydoesn't ask what you have to do to a society of peoplewho write God is Merciful and Compassionate on money,to make them hate you.

He just does it, buying into the coin ofthe Empire, nevermind it's teeteringon the verge of economic disaster, morally bankrupt,lawless —

Afghans, when their money became worthless,turned coins into jewelry.

How long before hundred dollar billsturn up in Chinese Walmarts as paper finger pulls,origami fish, folded paper earrings?

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Deja Voodoo

Here is an oldie but a goodie with a slight rewrite of the end.

Parallel Reality

* "Scientists now believe there may really be a parallel universe - in fact, there may be an infinite number of parallel universes, and we just happen to live in one of them. These other universes contain space, time and strange forms of exotic matter. Some of them may even contain you, in a slightly different form.

Astonishingly, scientists believe that these parallel universesexist less than one millimetre away from us. In fact, our gravity is just a weak signal leaking out of another universe into ours.

For years parallel universes were a staple of the Twilight Zone. Science fiction writers loved to speculate on the possible other universes which might exist. In one, they said, Elvis Presley might still be alive or in another the British Empire might still be going strong. Serious scientists dismissed all this speculation as absurd.

But now it seems the speculation wasn't absurd enough.

Parallel universesreally do exist and they are much stranger than even the science fiction writers dared to imagine.

It all started when superstring theory, hyperspace and dark mattermade physicists realize that the three dimensions we thought described the Universe weren't enough. There are actually 11 dimensions. By the time they had finished they'd come to the conclusion that our Universe is just one bubble among an infinite number of membranous bubbles which ripple as they wobble through the eleventh dimension.

Is there a copy of you reading this blog? A person who is not you but who lives on a planet called Earth, with misty mountains, fertile fields and sprawling cities, in a solar system with eight other planets? The life of this person has been identical to yours in every respect. "

But perhaps he or she will now decide to click over to atrios without finishing, yet you read on.

I got a glimpse of such a parallel universe the other day as I was going through the drive-in bank. Suddenly, I could see a worldjust like ours where the big tall buildings were not banks or office towers full of corporations owned by stockholders.

But the really big Cooperations had their own towers, just like the Sears Tower in Chicago or the old Chrysler building in New York.

In this world, the Cooperations ruled. They controlled the media through their advertising. They controlled the news through their broad ownership of media properties. They shaped the news and therefore controlled the way the people thought. They made the laws through their contributions to the so-called elected officials. They wrote the text books, the history books, and they created their own religions to give themselves a moral and spiritual foundation and edifice.

These Cooperations existed to provide services and goods for their members. And they were owned and democratically managed by their constituent members. There were Cooperation logos everywhere. They were on the shoes, the hats, the shirts, and the giant stadium score boards.

They sponsored teams and races and golf tournaments.

Some members of these Cooperations were super enthusiastic about their coop. They would belong to no other because they knew that their coop was the very best at what it did for its members.

It was the job of the Cooperation to find, identify, and contract with the very best provider for the product or service that it provided for its members.

Some of the Cooperations did it all. They provided food, housing, transportation, health enhancement, telecommunication, IT support, all in one neat efficient package. They were very powerful entities. Some were even more powerful than the national governments they operated within. Many had economies larger than the economies of the nation states.

Some smaller Cooperations were specialist in their fields, yet their members came from all over the Earth. Some provided unique legal or diplomatic services. Other Cooperations were uniquely local and very much in tune with the land. Still others were simply neighborhood organizations that actually protected and provided for its members.

Friday, October 27, 2006

The Sacred Balance

On the side of my bed is a book entitled "The Sacred Balance". It is written by David Suzuki.

Its introduction begins with these words:

Suppose that 200,000 years ago, biologist from another galaxy searching for life forms in other parts of the universe had discovered Earth and parked their space vehicle above the Rift Valley in Africa. They would have gazed upon vast grasslands filled with plants and animals, including a newly evolved species, Homo sapiens. It is highly unlikely that those extra-galactic exobiologists would have concentrated their attention on this young upright ape species in anticipation of its meteoric rise to preeminence a mere two hundred millennia later.

After all, those early humans lived in small family groups that didn't rival the immense herds of wildebeast and antelope. In comparison with other many other species, they weren't especially large, fast or strong. or gifted with sensory acuity.

Those early humans possessed a survival trait that was invisible because it was locked within their skulls and only revealed through their behavior.

Their immense and complex brains endowed them with tremendous intelligence, conferring as well a vast capacity for memory, and insatiable curiosity and an astonishing creativity, abilities that catapulted their descendants into a position of dominance on the planet.

clip

But suddenly in the last century, Homo sapiens has undergone a radical transformation into a new kind of force that I call a "superspecies".

For the first time in the 3.8 billion years that life has existed on Earth, one species-- humanity-- is altering the biological, physical and chemical features of the planet on a geologic scale."

"Nobody any longer knows what a sustainable future is," the bearded, bespectacled environmentalist told Reuters in a recent interview in Australia to promote his book, "David Suzuki: The Autobiography."

"I feel like we are in a giant car heading for a brick wall at 100 miles an hour and everyone in the car is arguing where they want to sit. For God's sake, someone has to say put the brakes on and turn the wheel."

I can't help but get encouraged by the notion that the Homo Sapiens in the geographic state that is known as the United States might actually use their "their immense and complex brains" and actually vote out the congressof the current regime of oil that has become the worst government in the history of that state.

But I must admit that, like Suzuki, I hear somewhere in the din of political discourse, the Suzukian equivalent of

Shotgun.

Let us do what we can to make certain that this wave of discontent and sanity will flow over their levees of deceit and vote counting chicanery.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Other Side

CaroneToday, I had another mind numbing day with those laggards of society who refuse to accept that the world has changed. These hard core professionals feel they know the realities of the world, and that they know through years of marginalization and outright cavaliar disregard for their ideas that they should always be realistic, and careful not to dream.

I am speaking, of course, of the Renewable Energy Industry.

The group was attempting to adopt a new policy position that called for a 2020 goal of “20% of electric energy" and 10 % of the state's transportation energy , with a greenhouse gas freeze at 2006 levels. For years, they had previously adopted a 20% of total energy by 2020 goal, but this group has matured as they have been brought into the family of respectable energy providers in the vaunted pantheon of energy bohemoths and had thus scaled back their previous lofty goals.

After a bit of discussion, I was able to persuade the group to go back to a state goal which called for “25 % of total energy to be produced by renewables by the year 2025”, with a greenhouse gas rollback to 2000 levels.

Beijing, China - A historic agreement was forged today among four renewable energy organizations to assess the feasibility of increasing the use of renewable energy to 25% of global primary energy supply by the year 2025.

The memorandum of understanding entitled "Joint Assessment of Reaching 25% Renewable Energy by the Year 2025" was negotiated and signed by Michael Eckhart, President of the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE), Li Junfeng, Executive Director of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association (CREIA), Arthouros Zervos, President of the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), and Wolfgang Palz, Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE).

"The time is right to raise our thinking to the next level," stated Michael Eckhart of ACORE.

"We acknowledge Europe's pledge to increase renewable energies, China's commitment to 15% renewables, and the Renewable Portfolio Standards of many of the US states, and now join together to assess how to take the next step in policy development.

"The memorandum calls for the groups to assess the feasibility and policy requirements needed to move the US, Europe and China to the 25% level in their respective areas, and to merge the results together into a joint report one year from now.

"It is imperative that we do this now," said Wolfgang Palz of WCRE.

"The world cannot wait for such policy thinking.

"The signing took place at the Great Wall World Renewable Energy Forum (GWREF), a world conference and exposition in China that opened this week with leaders from the US, Europe, China and other countries in attendance.” More

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Un-Gerrymandered

The Mad Moderate

delivered our Lloyd Doggett signtonight just before supper.The old orange cat slipped infor an autumn napas our new friend held the front door open through a long declarationof exactly Why he was madas hell at the Bush Administration.

Said he’d gone to the Travis CountyRepublican conventionthe year Bush was elected.

If I’d been telling it I would havesaid the year of the coup d’état —

Mostly I was trying to keepthree large dogs from slippingout the front door whileThe Mad Moderatecontinued to explain to Jay,who is in a mood to vote againstALL incumbents, that Doggettvoted against the Patriot Act,against fast tracking Free Trade,against restricting Habeas Corpusand was great on the environmentand women’s issues, really everythingexcept Iraq, and was better this yearabout that.

I know Lloyd Doggettmainly from years of work toprotect Barton Springs.

Right after 911 he came homeand held an impromptu town meetingat a NOW conference right beforeI read a an anti-war poem, thinkingthen they would do what they have done.

I’ve phone banked for his campaignevery time he’s run for office saveonce, when he lost a local raceby 19 votes.

I complain bitterly when he votesto fund the war.

He told me I was in the minority,that he agreed with me, but had torepresent the district.

That's what he used to say.Lots of us are mad at him aboutvoting to fund Iraq.

Recently he's backed the Murtha plan,who looks like my grandfather,and says we should negotiate withall stakeholder governments in theMiddle East and re-deploy troops.

When Tom Delay led the re-districtingfiasco that turned Lloyd’s district intoa fajita strip going from north of Austin to the border splitting the cityand cutting us out of his district I made sure hundreds of people cast the vote for himI lost, supported all the Killer-Ds,still do.

I helped write the State DemocraticPlatform, and it's a good document,not that anyone pays much attentionto platforms.

I like Lloyd Doggett.His father was a dentist about whom peoplesay when you call them, "He was a good man."His wife's fluent Spanish helped hold the newdistrict together.

The Mad Moderateis delivering and installing Democratyard signs in our left wing neighborhood.

This guy, who helped Bush getelected in 2000, is arguing with myhusband who’s mad at everyonein the Congress, even Lloyd.

But now Jay's going to vote forDoggett, the dogs didn’tget out and our front yard lookslike Democrat central, all of whichoccurred just as I was serving supper,because I’d called a friend andasked for a John Courage yard signthinking we were still in his district.

But we got un-gerrymanderedand given back to Lloyd,so Jay has to vote for oneincumbent after all.* Art by Jum Nuttle

Click here to identify and support peace candidates in local districts.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

A Bizarre Thought

Perhaps 20 years ago, I began to include a little bit in my speeches and presentations that some day, we would see global warming law suits that would make all the other class action law suits look like a space flea on Neptune.

Generally, my groups, even the best of them, would look at me with that look of marvel at what bizarre thoughts a truly creative brain is capable of, and then put the notion aside.

Since then, the state Tobacco Law suits have emblazened a trail for the roping in of rogue corporations that will recklessly endanger the lives of their addicted customers and the surrounding innocent bystanders who worked or lived around them.

It's the next wave of litigation -- after tobacco, guns, and junk food. Why Detroit, Big Oil, and utilities should worry

Two days after hurricane Katrina smashed into the Gulf Coast, F. Gerald Maples returned to his hometown of Pass Christian, Miss., to utter devastation. Most of his neighbors' houses were totally destroyed. His was in ruins. "It broke our hearts and absolutely changed our lives," he says. It also made Maples, a veteran asbestos plaintiffs' attorney in New Orleans, determined to fight back. "I couldn't stand by when my entire cultural history was destroyed by an event that could become more frequent because of global warming," he says.

So when friend and fellow trial lawyer Timothy W. Porter showed up to help with food and water, the two plotted a legal assault. Since Katrina's fury was powered by unusually warm Gulf water, and since such warmth could result from global warming, companies that have pumped the atmosphere full of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide should be liable for damages, they figured.

"To me, Katrina was a clear result of irresponsible behavior by the carbon-emissions corporate economy," says Maples. He recruited suddenly homeless neighbors like Ned Comer and filed a class action on their behalf in federal court in Gulfport, Miss.

Neither, apparently, do a host of other lawyers, in what is becoming an ambitious legal war on oil, electric power, auto, and other companies whose emissions are linked to global warming. At least 16 cases, drawing on a variety of legal strategies, are pending in federal or state court. It may seem like an unconnected hodgepodge of initiatives, but whether it's a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to force the Environmental Protection Agency to crack down on greenhouse gases or the effort by a coalition of Texas cities to require cleaner plants than 17 now proposed by utilities, the challenges spring from a common concern: the lack of action in Washington.

"This boomlet in global warming litigation represents frustration with the White House's and Congress' failure to come to grips with the issue," says John Echeverria, executive director of Georgetown University's Environmental Law & Policy Institute. "So the courts, for better or worse, are taking the lead."

(clip)

Business is fighting hard to toss the issue of global warming out of the courts entirely. "These kinds of judgments should be made by elected representatives," insists Quentin Riegel, vice-president for litigation at the National Association of Manufacturers. While industry lawyers don't fear any imminent liability, they are taking the litigation seriously. Three big law firms -- Hunton & Williams, Jones Day, and Sidley Austin -- are coordinating defense efforts on behalf of a group of utilities.

There are signs that others see the writing on the wall. Bryan Cave partner J. Kevin Healy says he advises corporate clients that they need to take "reasonable" steps to pare back emissions to reduce their legal exposure.

And despite the strong opposition to mandatory limits from the White House and key lawmakers, many companies, some with an eye to potential litigation, are privately ready to sign on to such curbs. Louisiana utility Entergy Corp. (ETR ) even took the unusual step of filing a brief supporting the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case.

(clip)

Even more litigation could be in the offing. Stanford University and others plan symposiums on legal responses to global climate change. And Stephen D. Susman, one of the nation's top trial lawyers, is making the issue a personal crusade. His firm is representing the Texas cities pro bono in their effort to assure cleaner power plants, and he's looking for other opportunities to help the cause.

In the 1990s, Susman defended Philip Morris Cos. (MO ) in the tobacco lawsuits filed by state attorneys general and thought his opponents' legal theories were so "bizarre" that they didn't have a chance.

"It turns out that I was the fool, and I'm not going to let that take place again," Susman says."

Whether or not the concentration of the oil companies partially contemplates the unitization of their social liability, only the minutes of their board meetings will tell, but one thing is for sure.

If you are a big company executive, and you are betting than you can make some immoral profit by building a lot of coal plants, a lot of SUVs, or giant homes that are inefficient, you are laying the groundwork for a combined action law suit that will bring you and your stockholders to their proverbial knees.

And maybe, just maybe, you will be able to share a room with Skillings.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Dancing in the Street

Night Dance

When the Stones played Zilker Park50,000 people paid $100 each to go insidethe fence, to catch a glimpse of Mick Jaggerin red sequins dance, belt out classics —he even sang "Bob Wills is King,"the crowd went wild.

We sat on our front porch.One of the twinsand his wife and baby girl walked downto the park and returned with the newsthat it was easierto hear the Stones from our yardthan close up.

I pointed a phone at the sky.My sister in California caught a riff "Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself."

The other twin and his girlfriendsat on the tailgate of a pickupin the driveway snuggling andlistening.

At one point I said somethingand he said,"Speak up Mom. We’re at a Concert."

Jay and I sat on the porch —a plate of blackened chicken,warm bread, a glass of wine.

The momentum of cheering crowdswashed across our neighborhood in waves.

Later, we danced in the street with ourtwo year old granddaughter,then watched fireworks thru the branchesof trees holding the beat.

Gotta love South Austin.We’ve got a local bumper sticker —78704: Not a Zip Code, A Way of Life.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Transnationalism

GrevOften, OK maybe not often, but often enough, I speak of being a transnationalist. The word, which is really a meme, is a fairly new one in the lexicon of human development, and I wasn't even sure it officially existed as such. So, I googled it today, and low and behold, I found that it is now in Wikipedia.

Transnationalism

"The concept of transnationalism is focused on the heightened interconnectivity between people all around the world and the loosening of boundaries between countries. The nature of transnationalism has social, political and economic impacts that affect people all around the globe.

The concept of transnationalism has facilitated the flow of people, ideas and goods between regions. It has been greatly affected by the internet, telecommunications, immigration and most importantly globalization.

Concepts like citizenship, nationalism and communitarianism are being changed and reexamined with this phenomenon of the modern age.

Transnationalism is often linked to internationalism but differs in the sense that internationalism proper refers to global co-operation between nation states, while transnationalism aims to global co-operation between peoples, and the obliteration of nationstates.

Transnationalism is closely related to cosmopolitanism. If transnationalism describes the individual experience, cosmopolitanism is the philosophy behind it. Transnational life styles could be precursor to a cosmopolitan world government.

(snip)

Facilitated by increased global transportation and telecommunication technologies more and more migrants have developed strong transnational ties to their home countries, blurring the congruence of social space and geographic space."

Now, my definition of transnationalism does not contemplate the obliteration of nation statesany more than nationalism requires the obliteration of other lesser political organizations like states, counties, cities, or school districts. It only requires that the basic ideology which defines our primary allegiance be tweeked a bit.

Nationalism is an ideology [1] that holds that a nation is the fundamental unit for humansocial life, and takes precedence over any other social and political principles. Nationalism makes certain political claims based upon this belief: above all, the claim that the nation is the only legitimate basis for the state, that each nation is entitled to its own state, and that the borders of the state should be congruent with the borders of the nation.

[2] Nationalism refers to both a political doctrine[3] and any collective action[4] by political and social movements on behalf of specific nations.

Nationalism has had an enormous influence upon world history, since the nation-state has become the dominant form of state organization." more

Nationalism therefore is an ideology.

And, at this point in time in human development, it is a very powerful ideology. But, once an ideology or meme becomes a barrier to human development, it becomes a less powerful ideology and its power to control our minds and thinking processes begins to wane.

And another meme, such as Transnationalism , will spring up and begin to wax in the free independent minds of thinkers all over the planet.

We will have to give up our worn out memes which would lead us down the paths that will result in the ends that we do not want to visit, and instead collectively begin to spread a new meme of transcendent transnationism.

We will certainly have to replace our worn out nationalistic memes of standard progressive left wing politics. (sorry guys)

Here is a part of the story from an AlterNet article by Joshua Holland.

Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil

Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as "the prize."

Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oilon earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set.

The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest countries, to complete its final oil law. Industry analysts expect that the result will be a radical departure from the laws governing the country's oil-rich neighbors, giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major oil producers and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected governments might want to pursue.

Iraq's energy reserves are an incredibly rich prize. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, "Iraq contains 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the second largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia), along with roughly 220 billion barrels of probable and possible resources. Iraq's true potential may be far greater than this, however, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions." For perspective, the Saudis have 260 billion barrels of proven reserves.

Iraqi oil is close to the surface and easy to extract, making it all the more profitable. James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, points out that oil companies "can produce a barrel of Iraqi oil for less than $1.50 and possibly as little as $1, including all exploration, oilfield development and production costs." Contrast that with other areas where oil is considered cheap to produce at $5 per barrel or the North Sea, where production costs are $12-16 per barrel.

(snip)

But the real gem -- what one oil consultant called the "Holy Grail" of the industry -- lies in Iraq's vast western desert. It's one of the last "virgin" fields on the planet, and it has the potential to catapult Iraq to No. 1 in the world in oil reserves. Sparsely populated, the western fields are less prone to sabotage than the country's current centers of production in the north, near Kirkuk, and in the south near Basra.

Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq's Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four -- the American firms Exxon-Mobile and Chevron, the British BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell -- that dominate the world oil market.

Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there's a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion's share of contracts. "The feeling is that the new government is going to be influenced by the United States," he said." more

It is rather telling that the facts of our invasion of Iraq have been so twisted and and that the US occupation of that country has been so tortured. The scene was set when the US troops entered Baghdad and immediatelty deployed to the the Oil Ministry, leaving the Antiquities Museum to be looted.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Who Benefits?

Refugee Camp Darfour

Several years ago I travelled to Uganda for a World Women's Congress, during which I taped a session on women and refugees in Africa. Listening to testimony about refugee camps in The Sudan, camps for internally displaced persons in Uganda, refugee camps all over the continent, I was filled with awe and horror. Today I find a news story claiming The Sudan to be the third largest oil producing country in Africa. I visited the source of the Nile River, and found a huge dam and water system described in the first poem below. Powerlines and transformers buldged out of a power grid and ran throughout the countryside where people have no electricity, into the cities where it is common for dozens of families to share one power cord. The springs that are the source of the Nile River are now underwater in a shallow lake that connects Lake Victoria to the Nile. A second dam project was in the works, to benefit whom, one wondered. Who benefits from Sudanese oil? Who benefits from miles of farmland planted with tea and coffee in the Ugandan countryside where people in local villages have no jobs or food?

Below: Rapids at Jinji, on the other side of the dam.

African Boat

A blue African boatcuts through soft water just past rapidson the far side of the sourceof the Nile.One man, deep black skin,oars a light blue wooden boatthroughPrussian blue water.Cormorants circle over headin something like a mist made fromhumid air and brilliant equatorial light

Madiee says there is a swimmerwho rides the rapids, huge swellingwaves that tuck into themselvesand pour out white water.I say he’d have to know whathe was doing, how the currentruns and dips, where to diveand where you’d be spit up,where the boulders are —

I wonder if anyone could do this —and then if I could do it

I think I could swim alongsidethe pale blue boatand ache to do ita deep, old longingthat pulls me tothe heart of things.

Nogalo

I am Nogalo, mother of twins.John is Sangalo, father of twins.Our sons are Waswa, the older onewho is bossy, and Kato, the second bornwho is mellow and compliant.

This circumstance, which I consider mygreatest trial and sometime blessing,brings me the friendship ofUgandans, who routinely discuss familymatters at the top of every social encounter,before business, before whatever peoplegather to accomplish, first one speaksof family —

I say my twins are adoptedand came to us at different times,Waswa when he was three,Kato when he was seventeen.

Ugandans understand adoption —twenty five percent of parents die from AIDS.Surviving family members struggle to providefor as many as twenty children.

"We saw these things," Muhammad told us —"Living babies strapped to the backs of dead mothersfloating down the rivers into Lake Victoria."

He said there were so many bodiesdecomposing in the water they couldn’t eat fishfrom the lake for three years.

I asked him to explain the genocide.He said the British put the Hutus into government jobsand they made the Tusies do menial work.

When the Tusies came to powerthey tortured and killed Hutus leaders and their families.Later another change of power and the Hutus started killing all the Tusies.

Hutu/Tusie/Tusie/Hutu.It is difficult to understand.

I got to thinking about what governments are supposed to do — keep people safe, provide infrastructure, some sortof stability, a peaceful process for the transfer of power.In Africa, Gabril says, the governments don’t do this.

In Africa, the French gave the good jobs to the Hutuswho gave the bad jobs the Tusis who revoltedkilling Hutus who revolted killing Tusiswhich a Westerner will say proves tribal conflictsare the source of African brutality

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Presswhich since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh.